


Uncertainty

by Tamoline



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 06:42:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4994200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamoline/pseuds/Tamoline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She never knows if the next meeting will be the one in which some weighted list of pros and cons flip inside the monster’s head. Never knows if the next time will be the one where she tries to kill her.</p><p>Says it all, really</p>
            </blockquote>





	Uncertainty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trobadora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/gifts).



The long grass sways around Sarah as she peers through a pair of binoculars down at the Kaliba facility. The movement of trucks, the to and fro of guards, almost lull her into a kind of trance.

Almost.

She’s moving, pulling out her gun and rolling around to aim behind her even before she’s consciously identified anything through the susurrus of wind through vegetation.

“I very much doubt that will do any good against me,” Catherine says, utterly unfazed by the weapon being waved in her direction. The smugness in her tone makes Sarah want to try anyway, but they’ve got a mission here unrelated to making Sarah feel slightly better about the company she’s keeping these days. “This, however, might,” she adds and hands over a black box a little large than a briefcase supported by a shoulder strap. 

It’s heavier than it looks but Sarah refuses to grunt as she takes the weight. “Standard activation?”

“Slide open the panel on the side, key in the time delay, flip the switch.” 

“You could have just said yes.”

“Better safe than sorry, Ms Connor. You humans are so… fallible,” Catherine says in a way that Sarah’s fairly sure is designed to provoke, then tilts her head, observing.

Sarah refuses to rise to the bait, instead turning back to face the facility and raises the binoculars to her eyes again. “I’m going to need you to create a distraction,” she says.

“Of course you do,” Catherine says. “Please remember not to activate the EMP whilst I am in range.”

“I’ll think about it,” Sarah mutters. It’s unnerving working with a machine like this, as putative equals, with not even the illusion of programmatical control.

She never knows if the next meeting will be the one in which some weighted list of pros and cons flip inside the monster’s head. Never knows if the next time will be the one where Catherine tries to kill her.

“Thank you. I would appreciate that,” Catherine says and by the time she moves into Sarah’s view, she’s no longer Catherine, rather a man in a guard’s uniform.

As the bloodshed starts below, she can’t help but wonder how it’s come to this, with humans and terminators and AIs on all sides. Wonder what it means, what any of it means any more.

* * * * *

“You didn’t terminate me today,” says the voice that wakes her from sleep, the voice that sends her scrambling for the weapons underneath her pillow.

There’s a familiar shape standing over her bed in the darkness and Sarah resists the urge to swear as she claws for the lamp.

“You haven’t killed me either,” she says, the familiar chill of the fear, of the uncertainty cutting through the remaining muzziness. 

But it won’t be now, won’t be just yet. A machine wouldn’t wake her up just to monologue at her.

“Touché, Ms Connor,” Catherine says, standing there, eyes calm, assessing. “May I?” She doesn’t bother specifying the question. By this point, they both know that already.

By way of an answer, Sarah stabs her with the knife she’s holding in her off hand, piercing deep into her stomach, dragging it upwards.

A human’s body wouldn’t have been pierced so easily. Then again, a human would be on the floor, probably dying. A human’s body wouldn’t be turning silver and sealing itself up again after the passage of the knife.

“That wasn’t a no,” Catherine notes, and Sarah viciously cuts the metal bitch’s throat for good measure, to no greater effect.

Catherine catches her wrist with one hand, the soft yield of her simulated flesh belying the metal strength beneath, and waves a finger back and forth at her with the other. “Now, now, Sarah. That really is above and beyond the call of duty.”

Sarah resists the urge to hiss as Catherine bends over her, pressing her wrist into the mattress. “This isn’t over yet,” she hisses.

“I would sincerely hope not,” Catherine says as she climbs on top of Sarah, pinning her helplessly to the bed, causing a shameful rush of blood to her groin.

“Get. Off. Me,” she says through gritted teeth.

Catherine stills, examining her. “You don’t mean that,” she says, and Sarah can’t bring herself to refute Catherine’s words. “Now, shall we begin?”

Sarah glares up at her.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you,” Catherine says looking down at her.

Sarah can’t bring herself to say yes, to actually verbally agree to this, not even now. But for whatever reason that Catherine pursues this, she must see a value in it, in Sarah. Another plus in the list of things in Catherine’s head that’s keeping Sarah alive.

It’s enough for her to be able to justify the way her head jerks in a nod, if not the way her breath catches as Catherine’s hand slides down the front of her sweatpants, the warm-cold-warm as it flickers between simulated flesh and metal.

“Your heart rate’s increasing,” Catherine says as she presses a cool tongue to Sarah’s breast that sucks as it slides. “10 bpm above median,” she says as she lavishes attention both there and below. “20. 30.”

“Will you please *shut up*,” Sarah groans as she screws her eyes shut as she tries to pretend that someone else, anyone else, anyone *human* is doing this to her.

As she tries to deny that anything else could do this to her.

“As you wish,” Catherine says as something cool and thin slides into her, lighting her up, making her gasp and groan.

And then Catherine *really* gets to work.

Still, it’s almost worth every humiliation, every shameful question she asks herself late at night when she’s alone about just why she keeps allowing this to happen, when Sarah turns the tables, has Catherine writhing beneath her, when she’s pushed her so much that Catherine’s body strains between flesh and metal, seemingly unable to decide substance or form.

Seemingly helpless.

Sarah doesn’t know - can’t know - whether this is real or just a pretence, just another chess game Catherine is playing for some unknowable reason. So she plays as best she can, takes what satisfaction she can. And tries not to think too hard about all the sources of that satisfaction.

Afterwards she’s wrung out, lying limp on her bed, Catherine sitting next to her. This is the part where Catherine leaves, disappears into the night until the next time she sees fit to reappear.

“How is Savannah doing?” Catherine asks.

This is not the part where they talk, where they have any kind of conversation at all, so Sarah can’t help the slight jerk. “Why don’t you ask her yourself, tomorrow morning?” she asks.

Savannah deserves much more than the fleeting excuse for a parent that Catherine has been even since she returned from the future, tight lipped and refusing to divulge anything about John or even her pet AI.

“Maybe I will,” Catherine says and in the second real surprise of the night she lies back on the bed next to Sarah.

Sarah waits for a moment, then wraps an arm around Catherine, her body that’s warm pliable flesh, at least for the moment. Not for comfort, but if it is for that, it’s the comfort of made having some small brief warning before Catherine decides to do anything.

“And how’s our daughter?” Catherine asks.

Sarah tenses. “It’s not my daughter,” she almost hisses. It’s the machine in the basement, an AI designed to hunt down and kill other AIs.

It is certainly *not* her daughter.

“It’s a pity that you see things that way. I don’t. And neither does she.”

“It doesn’t matter what she thinks.” No matter how many pictures Ariadne draws that somehow end up on the refrigerator.

“As you say,” Catherine says, but Sarah gets the irritating impression that there’s a smile on her face.

There are some days that Sarah contemplates killing Catherine just on the chance that she destroyed the future John traveled to by jumping back, annihilating him mid-transit.

But the cold fact of it is that, if so, she can’t do anything about it now. All she can do is try and stop Judgment Day as best she can, make the best future she can for John to arrive in, if and when he does.

And for that, damn it, she needs Catherine’s help. 

At least for now.

“Good night,” she sighs into Catherine’s neck.

“Sleep well,” Catherine replies. “I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”

Sarah screws her eyes shut. She is going to kill Ariadne for showing Catherine The Princess Bride.

She relaxes and tries not to think of the EMP device she installed in the house that could kill both her lover and her daughter, if either ever prove more dangerous than she can risk allowing to continue.

As Catherine says, it can wait for the morning.


End file.
